Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Turks & Caicos | Sun, Sand, and Sesame!

Last week, we escaped for a winter getaway to Turks & Caicos. Pre Noah, I was an accountant (an auditor more specifically), and I was never able to take any days off between January 1st - April 15th. After many "busy seasons", I promised myself that once I was no longer in the field, we would start taking winter getaways to somewhere warm. Two years ago we went to Miami. We were considering going back, but then our friends told us about the Beaches Resort in Turks & Caicos. Our friends have a daughter just a year older than Noah and this will be their third year back. We value their opinion and if they love it so much, we knew we had to give this beautiful island and resort a try! Yesterday, I shared 10 things I did not expect to happen on our vacation. Today I am sharing how we spent our days and nights. For this vacation, it was all about taking it easy and really enjoying ourselves as a family. And while I brought my good camera on the trip, I barely used it. I wanted to be hands free and participate more on the beach and at the pool rather than lugging around my big camera. Don't get me wrong though, I still took tons of photos and videos, just on my phone.

First up, the beaches... the beaches in Turks & Caicos are beautiful! The sand is soft and beautiful and the water is such a pretty turquoise color. For the 5 days we were there, the weather was in the low 80s, a few clouds in the sky, and the perfect amount of breeze that you never overheated. We still needed to wear hats and apply sunscreen, but we were able to stay on the beach almost all day without getting too hot. While I'm used to deeper beaches (more sand from when you walk on until you get to the actual water), it really wasn't an issue. We never had an issue finding a spot, and the short distance to the water made it easy for Noah to go back and forth and get buckets of water for his sand castles and holes. There was one spot of the beach that was nonexistent one morning because of high tide, but we simply walked a little further down and found the perfect (and quiet) spot. We learned that Noah is a total beach kid and preferred to spend our time there over the pool. Though when I asked him if he wanted to go to the beach, he'd say no... he wanted to go to the "sand" ;) Noah was content building sand castles and digging holes with Chris. I would go back and forth between playing with them, to relaxing and reading a book on my phone. It also didn't hurt that waiters would come around taking drink orders... we really got used to smoothies in the sand :)

While the beaches were beautiful, we had just as much fun exploring the resort. The resort is huge and has so many things to do. We stayed in a first floor walkout room in the French Village. We really liked the French Village because it was on the quieter side and the pool (which was a 2 minute walk from our room) was beautiful and never crowded. Noah also liked the swim up bar :) The only downside was that we were the furthest village from the beach. It was really never a problem though... it was just a ten minute walk and Noah loved taking the little choo choo train or golf carts all around the resort anyway.

^^^ taking an early morning stroll straight from our hotel room :)

When planning the trip, I thought we would spend a lot of time at the water park. They had a pirate ship, a lazy river, and many water slides. We did go on the lazy river once, but Noah didn't want to go again... I don't think he liked going under the waterfall. While Noah loved going down the waterslides at Sesame Place, he was not interested in it this time. I can totally see him loving this section of the resort in a few years... we'll just have to go back ;)

After spending so much time in the sun, Noah was ready for a nap around 2pm. One day we all needed a nap, but the other days it was nice to have the walkout so we could sit outside while Noah snoozed. Then it was time to shower and get ready for dinner (more on the food tomorrow) and some Sesame Street entertainment. On our first night, there was a Sesame Street parade. We got a seat super early expecting it to be crowded like at Sesame Place. It was much more low key at the resort and wasn't really necessary to arrive early. Same went for the show we saw later in the week. Seeing the Sesame characters walking around the resort was definitely an added bonus to our vacation :)

^^^ On this trip, we got Noah two souvenirs... a mini Super Grover and a shell :)

Here's a video I made of the 5 days we spent in Turks & Caicos... Enjoy!

I've heard of Sesame Place! I was actually surprised that that was there because for some reason, to me Turks and Caicos doesn't seem super kid friendly. But clearly after this post, I can totally see that it is super kid friendly! And you totally make me want to go!